I moved back to Cedar, across the street from Ground Zero, about nine months after my apartment was blown up. I had been home that day and experienced the whole mess first hand. Moving back was the last thing I expected to do. It took a long time before deciding to return to the same building, on the corner of a hole. My motivation was in part financial, there were a lot of inducements being offered to get one to return, but as important if not more so, was the feeling that I needed to be here, that I had feelings and emotions to resolve, that were fuzzy and twisted and the resolution, if such things can be "resolved", would best happen where it began. The flags were not planned, they are nothing at all in image or medium like my normal work. They are nothing at all like real life. The flags were a gut reaction, like how I some times jump at claps of thunder and lightning flashes, am nervous of low flying planes, or wake in the middle of the night for no good reason and start organizing stuff and there were these fabrics to put away and one thing led to another and the flags happened. And the walls came tumbling down Oh I was scared. A fucking airplane coming straight at me. In my face. Talk about the local news. There had been an explosion, big noise and all this shreded paper and cancelled checks blowing in the window. I ran outside with my camera (didn't everybody video it?). Didn't know about the "first" plane hitting the North Tower. I lived behind the South Tower and thought it had been a bomb. I definitely didn't expect the second plane. I moved to the front of the complex, between the two towers, the one on the right with smoke billowing out. I was filming the smoke and flames and people for awhile when I turned my head and saw the second plane, not so much low in the sky as high off the ground, and turning at an impossible angle and there was a fireball and I remember running, everyone running, and falling and getting up, and running. Destination someplace else, anyplace else, away. That was the beginning. There was a short intermission while you watched the Burning Building Show and then back to the regular program, when everything was falling down and at you. The next four hours involved running from crumbling buildings and mushroom clouds of crushed concrete and asbestos, and hiding in cellars, and dust, lots of dust. Afterward, no matter how I tried to downplay its impact, convinced that I could deal with it, the utter upheaval made me an illegitimate child of that day. My thoughts, the words I use to think about my life, are different, the time frame of past and present in my internal clock reset from a tuesday in September to Day 1. It was a large event, larger than any before, larger than me, an event almost everything else is now measured by. Whatever affirmation, reaffirmation, or denial I express is given heavy substance and force because of it. Human Evolution This is the saddest flag, the one with the soft blue stars. The blue stars are made from a KLM blanket. I took it with me from the plane I flew on to Europe. When I was sort of running away. Thin blanket. Comforting blanket, safe blanket and fireproof. On 9/11 I stood and watched where they died while they were dying. Thousands. It dents your mind. Is a loss, losses, lostest. I did a lot of traveling. Not to think, my mind was just a little too lumpy and topturvy. Being pushed out of your life makes you a refugee from normality, a Talking Heads doll: "This is not my house, this is not my life". But every morning you wake up in this new here and now and nothing I write on a postcard or sew on a banner can convey how it makes you feel or not feel. It was happening just far enough away, so that there was not much detail, like cute little Keith Haring figures, but these cartoons, were, living people, jumping. No fun at all. The thousands of tourists that gape through the fence on Church and on Liberty want to know what it was like, but they really wouldn't want to see it through my eyes. Watching them jump, covered in a sweet and sour suicide covered choice of human evolution. What can you do? What you can do. I spent awhile distracting myself to avoid thinking too much about choices. Now there is a lot of talk about a memorial. Do I want a memorial? I don't know. Ask me later. It is a poor mourning while life is poorly celebrated. September 11 th was a funeral, a birthday, a rite of passage. This is a memorial to my memory, of the jumpers The Hero Flag There were a few times when I could feel tears welling up, but only cried once, cried, freely and uninhibitedly. It was about six weeks after 9/11. I was one of the last to be allowed to return to their home to gather up whatever was left. Those trips were difficult in many ways. There was the physical, logistical, difficulty of getting your shopping cart (another if a friend was helping that day), making sure you had two forms of ID, and proof of address. No private vehicles below Canal, so you schleped down Broadway with your shopping cart. At Fulton, you showed your ID in order to cross the street, then waited on line to show your papers again and get a police escort. There were also emotional issues. The time I cried was on the first trip, the police escort and I walking to Cedar Street, talking about where we were when it happened. In those days that's what everybody talked about. He told me how within 45 minutes he and his buddies were helicoptered in from a Staten Island precinct. He told me two of his friends had died that day. We were within sight of my building when he finished and I could see the firehouse, the one that still stands directly across the street from Ground Zero. It was the only building between me and what happened that day. I started to tell him about the firemen. About how I remembered them even though I never knew their names. But I saw them every day, and would smile or wave, we rarely spoke, but I especially enjoyed Sundays, when I would be going for the paper and coffee, watching them unrolling and rolling their hoses, or sitting on the bumper of a firetruck bullshiting on a cool and sunny morning. While I was describing this, I thought about how they ran instinctively into the burning buildings to save complete strangers, people Ð waiters, vice presidents and messengers where all equal. when I suddenly dissolved into tears. We kept walking, not saying anything, me in tears, past the National Guard guy and showing my papers again, and to my apartment and the ashes. I don't know when I will cry next, but I have a pretty good mental block of why. Made in the USA A tired, worn flag waving in the face of terrorism. September 11 was the key that unlocked the beehive mentality afoot in the government bush. War self-defined by the wagers. The engine of the war machine turned on and rolling out before US. Middle east, middle west, middle north middle south. Terrorist targets on the map made up of a landscape of hidey holes and the collateral damage of a system flailing back. Saddam refrain in al Queda robes. You don't have to take sides if you want to kill every threat, regardless of friendly fire and wedding parties. Does anyone remember Vietnam? Does it all boil down to a fruitless escalation of disagreement. It feels like it is losing all sense of proportion. Civil liberty fighting for air, while expensively suited leaders wielding aerial bombs maneuver like guys with tire irons in a alley fight. And with the war there wages the lush expansive of marketing, the underarm deoderant of our eminent domain. America, in any case, the merchandising arm of democracy, took the attack on the World Trade Center to its heart and soul and with appropriate packaging and residual rights determined created a new line of exciting products for news, politics, opinion, fashion, design and point of purchase spin offs. I have a pretty good idea of the enemy but I'm not quite so clear about who my friends are in this war. I certainly don't know who is protecting me, or from what. Title The 9/11 Flags Date 2002 Medium Fabric Size various